Geomagic Studio Opens Up 3D Imaging Possibilities

By DE Editors

Geomagic Inc. (Research Triangle Park, NC) is now shipping version 10 of Geomagic Studio, its application for reconstructing images from scanned data. With Geomagic 10, says the company, you can scan your existing assets to shorten the design cycle and prepare models for analysis, MCAD, or other downstream applications. Geomagic Studio 10 enables you to scan a physical model, and then automatically create accurate models that capture and reproduce the design intent or the as-built part.

"Geomagic Fashion is a unique tool for industrial designers and others who want to recapture the design intent of an as-built object." — Peter Scott, Geomagic, VP of engineering

Geomagic Studio is said to close the loop between the physical and digital worlds by ensuring that scanned data of a physical object is accurate and that you have the tools to analyze, clean up, and refine data for downstream design, analysis, and manufacturing. With Geomagic Studio 10, which is now available in a 64-bit edition, you can generate continuous surfaces and watertight models from 3D scan data of physical objects.

In Geomagic Fashion, extended contours are created to define connections between primary surfaces.

The major enhancement to Geomagic Studio 10 is a new optional surfacing module called Geomagic Fashion. When used in conjunction with Geomagic Studio, Geomagic Fashion lets designers extract design intent and recreate original surface aesthetics from scanned physical objects. The software can automatically identify, analyze, and correct imperfections in the scan data to create high-quality analytic and freeform surfaces that are MCAD-ready. The result, says the company, is that you’ll spend less time creating the initial form, leaving more time to focus on fit and function.

"Geomagic Fashion is a unique tool for industrial designers and others who want to recapture the design intent of an as-built object," says Peter Scott, Geomagic’s vice president of engineering. "It identifies, analyzes and corrects imperfections to generate idealized, high-quality surfaces such as those commonly used in automotive and consumer product design."

Version 10 also comes with a new GUI (graphical user interface) and multi-sensor metrology support. The new interface lets you configure sliders and collapse menus for a less-cluttered workspace. Multi-sensor metrology provides support for users who use 3D scanners and hard probes by enabling them to capture a full 3D scan of an object and then use a hard probe to create features such as cylinders, cones and spheres as well as to measure out-of-sight areas for precise shape capture.

Geomagic says that Studio 10 has new extension editing capabilities that speed and improve surface generation by enabling you to make global adjustments such as resizing, repositioning, and smoothing extension lines.

Hybrid-modeling capabilities let you output idealized profile curves and extract both swept (extruded, revolved) and analytic (cylinders, spheres, planes, cones) surfaces from scan data, and then export this data into a MCAD system to build a model.

Geomagic Fashion classifies regions on the model according to the surface types. For example: planes, cylinders, and swept surfaces.

The texture map is used to show the high quality of surfaces created using Geomagic Fashion.

When you visit Geomagic for more details, you can sign up to request a free 90-day trial of Fashion Studio — or just use the third link below.

And for those users seeking an opportunity to expand their experiences with Geomagic solutions, use the last link below to find out more about Convergence 2008, the Geomagic User Conference (“Where 3D imaging professionals, innovation and technology converge”), to be held March 4-6, 2008 in Research Triangle Park, NC.